Bitmap
Bitmaps are used for visuals that need textures or sprites like environments, objects, effects, menus, etc. Type The bitmap type drop down box is used to tell tool how to process the image and what rules to apply. * 2D Textures: A flat 2D texture. Mainly used for environments, objects. Also used for menus and effects. * 3D Textures: A set of texture slices that when combined forms a texture cube. Used in the Shader_transparent_plasma. * Cube maps: A set of 6 textures that combines into a cube. Used for simulating reflections in shaders. * Sprites: A set of textures that have multiple sprites fitted on them. Used for effects and huds. * Interface bitmaps: Textures that don't have to follow the rule of needing to be power-of-two. Should only be used for menus. Format & Usage Sprites The sprite type allows a bitmap to contain a non-power-of-two texture, with support for animations with multiple permutations (sequences). This is typically used for particles. Budget Budget size determines how big each texture page is (and thus how many sprites will appear on each page). Budget count sets how many texture pages there will be. Both of these values should be set for sprites. When compiling a bitmap, tool will output how many pages were generated and the percentage of space filled by the sprites. Budget size and count should be tweaked to get this percentage as high as possible, as unused space is wasted memory. Budget sizes are limited to "square" dimensions like 256x256 and 512x512. Because of this, it is sometimes more memory efficient to split the sprites up across several pages. For example, putting a sprite sheet with seven 56x56 sprites on a single page would require a 512x512 budget size, because 512x512 is the smallest size that can fit all of the sprites. However, If that same sprite sheet was split up across two pages, each page would only need to be 256x256, cutting memory usage in half. NOTE: Tool automatically uses 4 pixels of padding between each sprite. This means four 32x32 sprites will not fit on a 64x64 page. Make sure to take this into account when choosing a budget size! Sequences A sequence is an animated sprite. Each sprite in a sequence represents a "frame" of the sprite's animation. You can have multiple sequences in one bitmap, allowing for random and forced permutations. Each frame of a sequence is lined up left-to-right. Each sequence permutation is stacked vertically, top-to-bottom. NOTE: Tool will sometimes split a sequence across several pages. This does not affect functionality. Dummy space You can also specify dummy space on your sprites by using a solid color that is placed over parts that don't have important information in them. This tells tool to still center your sprite the way you want it to, but it will be able to save space on the texture page and fit more sprites in less space. Color plate The colors used for the background, dividers and dummy space are specified in the three top left pixels of the source image, this is called the plate. This way tool knows what colors mean what. They can be any color as long as they match what you used in the image and if they are not in the sprites themselves. This means that if your sprite has a lot of blue in it, you can make the background green for clarity and have it import properly. If you are not using dividers and dummy space you don't need to add this to your image. Cube maps Cubemaps are a combination of 6 textures that form one cube. It is used for reflections in shaders. Importing Cube maps are imported either as folded out cubes or sprite sheets. All faces should have the same resolution, power-of-two and square. Just like sprites, cube map bitmaps can contain multiple sequences/cube maps for use with forced permutations. Examples of acceptable source images for cubemap import:Category:Tag Category:Resource File:Cubemap_swamp.png|Swamp cubemap folded out File:Cubemap_beach.png|Beach cubemap laid out in a sprite sheet File:Cubemap_red_tone.PNG|Red tone cubemap also laid out in a sprite sheet File:Cube_map_forerunner_interiors.png|Forerunner interiors cubemap folded out